It’s that time: Every year we aggregate selective lists from all over — newspapers, reviewers, booksellers, librarians, book clubs, major awards and more — to provide the ultimate consensus on the year’s very best books, which always results in a terrific set of lists. Last year The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers and Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe shared the top honor as the best books of the year. For now it’s still early in the “list season,” with about 33 votes in so far, and the leading picks are all tightly packed, though […]
Best of
Barnes & Noble’s Best Books of The Year So Far
Barnes & Noble announced their 10 best books of the year so far. (For what it’s worth, a year ago only one of their mid-year “so far” picks — Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner — also made it onto the chain’s best books of the year lists in December.): Book Lovers, by Emily Henry Book of Night, by Holly Black The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan Daughter of the Moon Goddess, by Sue Lynn Tan The Hacienda, by Isabel Cañas I Will Die in a Foreign Land, by Kalani Pickhart Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus To Paradise, […]
Correction
Our apologies: Friday’s list celebrating the very best books of 2021 got an important credit wrong. Honoree Fanonne Jeffers’ novel of the year The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois was edited by Erin Wicks and published by Harper.
For the Record: The Very Best of the Best Books of 2021
Per our earlier counts, it came down to the wire in tabulating the consensus very best books of 2021 and fittingly, works of nonfiction and fiction tied for Book(s) of the Year: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers and Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe shared the top honor. And books by Kazuo Ishiguro, Colson Whitehead, and Michelle Zauner all followed so closely (just two votes behind) that you can consider them almost equally lauded. As usual, here are out top 10s for the year — based on 63 “votes” from a variety of […]
The Best of the Best Children’s Books of 2021
Once again, we are able to include children’s literature in our annual process of tabulating the consensus Best of the Best Books of the year. Drawing on a slightly smaller group of 18 selective sources in all, this year the data yielded more middle grade picks than in the past (including a nonfiction book, Gary Paulsen’s memoir), with a natural group of top titles there and in young adult, and with a long roster of picture books appearing on the same number of lists: Top Middle Grade Books of the Year The Legend of Aunti Po, Shing Yin Khor Starfish, […]
The Top 10 Best of the Best Books of 2021 So Far
As we continue to tabulate the consensus very best books of 2021, the roster has remained one of the most interesting and competitive we have seen in years of aggregating. Distinctions are fine, with all of the top titles receiving similar totals of “picks” from across the lists we monitor. At the very top, works of fiction and nonfiction are closely matched for “book of the year” honors — and across the top 10, the list is more balanced than usual, with five works of nonfiction and six novels. (Eight are from Penguin Random House, with one each from Simon […]